ALTAMONT — The congressman, in a black overcoat and shiny shoes, bent down to touch a pile of rusty and broken pipes outside the cement-block well house on Gun Club Road. The wind was chill and the gray sky held snow on the first day of spring as a bevy of local officials clustered about Paul Tonko.

Jeffrey Moller, Altamont’s superintendent of public works, wearing a jacket with his name on it and work boots, had gathered the pipes to illustrate for the congressman some of what was underground in the village.

Students were out and about, signing at the Empire State Plaza as a form of light lobbying in Albany on Monday, and constructing a refuge in Schenectady as part of a BOCES Career and Technical Education program.

In conjunction with National Lymphedema Awareness Day, Senator George Amedore read a resolution passed by the Senate the day before it was visited by Emma Detlefsen, a 6-year-old from Berne who has helped to raise funds to research the disease that she has.